Monday, May 26, 2014

May 26, 2014

It is so good to be writing to you again!! this week was so amazing so I'm super excited to tell you all about it! :) Monday was so much fun! we went to a park near our house and just played around for an hour or so. They had a cool trail so we walked around and it was nice to just relax! it was great because you guys know how much i love nature! haha but once preparation day ended we tried a few people who weren't home and then we had a lesson with a family who was a referral from a ward member. They came to our ward members house and we had a bbq and FHE. It was definitely nerve wracking to teach a lesson in a members home to a referral but it went really amazing! We taught about the plan of salvation. the members have a big chalkboard in their backyard so we had the kids draw pictures on it for us! the friend, Ashley, and her husband talked to us a lot after. They are expecting their third baby and Ashley just kept talking about how much she loves the churches emphasis on families so we're excited to see what will happen with them in the future! The member texted us after and said it went perfect so we were very relieved! It's so much fun to work with the members and teach in their homes!! Tuesday was super great! We had zone and district meetings and we talked about following up with the members. We have been leaving them tons of commitments but it's been hard to follow up with them and see how they are actually doing on keeping their commitments! We got lots of good advice and are now working on doing a better job at our follow up!! After our meetings we went to the mission office so sister Egbert could get her finger print paper work. After that we went to do FB but ended up talking to our neighbor for a really long time. She's from Russia and is trying to learn English so we're trying to get some ward members who speak Russian to help her. She wants to learn about the church but her husband doesn't want her to. He seems to be softening up to us a lot though!! After that we went and ate dinner with a family and afterwards went to an appointment. We had such an amazing lesson with them!! We had challenged them to read out of preach my gospel and they told us that they hadn't done it. We talked about all the blessings that come from reading out of preach my gospel and they told us a lot of the concerns that they have and we just promised them that as they studied and prayed to God that they would find answers to all their questions. It was really powerful and they promised that they would study preach my gospel before the next time we come over, but if they don't we can study it with them. They are such a cute couple and kind of remind me of grandma and grandpa Brown so of course I love them! :) Wednesday was wonderful! After studies we had to go get fingerprints done for Sis Egbert and had a lot of little complications but we eventually got it all figured out! After that we went and did FB and then visited a ward member. she's in her 80s and is getting ready to move into a nursing home, so she needs some service done to get her house ready to sell. we had a really nice visit with her! her husband passed away about a year ago and he was kind of a big deal in the CIA. so you know that movie Argo that came out awhile ago? well he worked for the CIA when all that was happening and he was a graphic designer so he designed the logo for the fake film company that got the group into whatever country the people were in to rescue the Americans. I don't know if that made sense but i thought it was pretty cool! A huge miracle happened while we were there though! Her daughter was at her house that day and we got to meet her and we had a great conversation, so we're super excited to be able to visit with her now!! That night we had a lesson with one of our members. he works for the government and last weekend he was in Miami protecting Prince Harry...NBD (no big deal). haha! But right before we started the lesson one of their old friends showed up so we ended up having to leave. Then we went to check on Luis Chica but he wasn't home so we left him a note on his door. We were feeling pretty discouraged because of that and we only had like 20 minutes left before we needed to go home and we decided to go check on this lady we met last week named Sadia. she is SO amazing!!! She was really excited to see us again and had so many amazing questions! She's from Pakistan and is so prepared! After our visit she ended up inviting us to come back on Sunday! Thursday was so great! after studies we decided to go visit our investigator Ellen. she's the one with the 2 teenage daughters and she's going through a really hard time right now. We walked with her and her little chihuahua Jorge. We had a really nice visit with her and she opened up to us a lot. she told us it was her daughters birthday, so later that night we brought back some nail polish and a card and doorbell ditched it! After seeing Ellen we had our Portuguese practice with Valerie which is always exciting! after that we visited our friend Louise. she's in her 80s and we talked to her about coming back and doing some service. she is so cute! When we left she hugged us and gave us big wet sloppy grandma kisses and said "love you!" haha i think she has adopted us as her granddaughters. We went and had a lesson with one of our ward members who served his mission in Portugal that night and it was a lot of fun! He has 2 really cute kids with LOTS of energy so we had fun! We also found out he used to coach BYU rugby which is pretty cool! Friday was a really great day! We had weekly planning and then went and tried to visit our friends Ermie and sheila who couldn't meet with us until the next day. After that we saw the a family we haven't been able to get in contact with for awhile! We were starting to get pretty worried but we had a really great visit. The wife told us her embarrassing moment of the week which was that she went out to go sweep her porch and after a while she heard her neighbor yelling her name. She looked and her neighbor told her she had tucked her dress into her underwear hahaha! Then we talked about the book of Mormon. she said "believe it or not I've read the whole thing!" she had a bishop who challenged her to and she felt like he didn't think she would so she read it. she's such a hoot! we're trying to get her to read it again so we'll see what happens!! that night we did a lot of street contacting with not too much success until we met this super amazing girl! Her grandparents are serving a mission in New Zealand right now! she's really open and really wants us to come back and see her again so that was pretty cool! there's a memorial day festival called viva Vienna here in Vienna that's been going all weekend so we are going today and hope to see her there! Saturday was exhausting and soo amazing! in the morning we went to a stake activity called gifts of the heart. all the members donate old clothes and stuff and the whole stake center is basically transformed into a thrift store. then people in the community come and are able to get the stuff for free! it was a mad house!! there were so many people there and we had such a blast! after that we went to viva Vienna because some members were supposed to have a booth up but i guess it fell through so we walked around the outskirts instead and handed out some flyers for a church tour. We then went to one of our members houses whose daughter was having a birthday party. It was "frozen" theme and was definitely the funnest, most unique dinner appointment I've had on my mission! We got to the appt a little early so we walked around to try and talk to some people and met the kindest Chinese woman! She talked to us about a former sutdent she had who was Mormon and how if she hadn't been baptized Methodist she would have joined our church. She told us to send missionaries to her daughter who lives in another town near by who is going through a really hard time so we're excited to see what happens there!! After dinner we stopped and saw Ermie and Sheila. Ermie is a member and Sheila is her daughter in law who is not a member. Things were going awesome and then Sheila had to leave the room to take care of her son so we couldn't teach anymore! We're working on getting Sheila some friends in the ward. after that we went and saw Jean Pierre. we drove by and he was out in his yard so we threw on our service clothes and went to help him. by that time he was already getting ready to quit but he was so excited to see us! he said "i am really so impwessed with you girls!" (said in a french accent) he is so adorable and we are excited to help him out! i don't think he believed that we really wanted to help him until he saw us show up like that. it was really cool! we had an awesome talk with him too and he told us even more amazing things about his life! he has done some really cool things with some pretty amazing people so it's interesting to see that his life has ended up just like anyone else's. it makes me realize what things are truly important in life!! Sunday was another crazy exciting day! we had the McLeod's at church again!!!! this is week 3 of them coming!!! we are sooo excited! Church was really awesome and the couple that spoke invited four families to come hear them and one of them came so we got to meet them which was exciting! After church we went and handed out more flyers for the church tour and talked to some really great people! After that we headed to a lesson in a members home with an investigator that we found that is a long lost friend of theirs! the friend texted and told her she wouldn't be able to come until six but we had an appt at 630 with Sadia so we went and saw her real quick and had a great lesson! she told us she's starting her semester of school so she's not sure how much she can see us but she wants to keep learning. Her boyfriend came in the middle of our talk and he's from India. We had a really great lesson with them and the boyfriend had a lot of his questions answered which was exciting! After that we rushed back to our other lesson and it went so well! We again taught the plan of salvation and we had the kids draw it with sidewalk chalk on the driveway and they loved that. The investigator, Clarice, had tons of questions and really loved the lesson! after that we stopped by our investigator Alicia's house to check on her and had a nice lesson with her as well. I felt like an official missionary this week as my feet smelled horrible every night when i took my shoes off AND i had to use superglue to fix my shoe!! there's no better feeling than wearing out your shoes and coming home completely exhausted at the end of the night! i love you guys so so much and think about you lots and am grateful for all you sacrifice to help me be out here! It inspires me to keep working hard no matter what happens and reminds me of why I want to share the gospel with people! love love love you!!!! Sister Pehrson

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